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Remote Access Connection Manager failed to start

Question

I am having issues trying to connect to a network using VPN on Windows 8.1. I have a VPN connection set up which had been working fine until now, however now when I click on it to connect nothing happens. If I go to view network connections
I can see the connection but if I try to right click it and view properties I get an error saying an unexpected error occurred. If I look in event viewer I can see 2 errors:

Service Control Manager

The Remote Access Connection Manager service terminated with the following error:

The system cannot find the file specified.

RasMan

Remote Access Connection Manager failed to start because it could not load one or more communication DLLs. Ensure that your communication hardware is installed and then restart the Remote Access Connection Manager service. If the problem persists, contact
the system administrator. The system cannot find the file specified.

If I try and start the Remote Access Connection Manager service manually I get an error saying Windows can not start the Remote Access Connection Manager service on local computer. Error 2 System could not find the file specified.

Has anyone else had this problem, and if so what did you do to correct it. I could refresh/re-install windows but I was trying to avoid it if possible.

Answers

I have provided the whole of the error message above, it doesn't give me any more detail unfortunately.

Try using ProcMon to get more context for it. Filter with Operation Is WriteFile (or similarly but for more detail, with Category Is Write). Then when you have guessed which "write" corresponds to a message that you have seen you can remove the
filter and see before that any registry and file accesses which might have contributed to the message's content.

I have provided the whole of the error message above, it doesn't give me any more detail unfortunately. I have already tried re-installing the communication hardware but it hasn't made a difference and the Remote Access Connection Manager will not
start.

I have had a look at the article you refer to but it seems to be related to Windows Server, I am running Windows 8.1. I have looked for the DLL's that are mentioned in the article and they exist on my machine so it looks ok there. I don't think
there is a way to re-install routing and remote access on windows 8.1 other than to reset/repair windows so I don't think that's an option.

I haven't tried to repair windows yet as it will remove any programs I have installed and basically I will have to re-build the machine, re-adding all the programs I have installed. I will try a windows repair if I need too and I'm sure it will fix
the problem but at the moment it's a last resort.

I have provided the whole of the error message above, it doesn't give me any more detail unfortunately.

Try using ProcMon to get more context for it. Filter with Operation Is WriteFile (or similarly but for more detail, with Category Is Write). Then when you have guessed which "write" corresponds to a message that you have seen you can remove the
filter and see before that any registry and file accesses which might have contributed to the message's content.

I have exactly the same problem after enabling Virtualization in the BIOS and installing VirtualBox. Disabling Virtualization and uninstalling VirtualBox did not fix the issue, neither did a System Restore to an earlier snapshot.

"netsh int ip reset" does not help, either. It reports the following unhelpful error:

I did not find anything useful with ProcMon when running int ip reset. When I try to start the RasMan service, the only fs failures I see are ACCESS DENIED on C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Sqm\Upload\PnrpResolveSession0.sqm (the Upload folder is empty) and
NAME NOT FOUND on C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk (the Connections folder is empty)

I did not find anything useful with ProcMon when running int ip reset.

Perhaps you should interpret those as incorrect responses to the actual symptom that ProcMon is showing you and try to find workarounds for them? E.g. could you put something in the Pbk directory? Disable SQM? Etc.

I noticed that all the VPN-related WAN Miniport devices were shown with an error in device manager while RasMan tries to start. I tried to get rid of them and reinstall them but failed (the workaround of replacing the driver with a dummy driver first did
not work - The device did not change at all). Deleting them from the registry (in [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}]) did not help, either, and even after restoring the registry settings, it's
worse than before. Now the failure I get is:

"The Remote Access Connection Manager service depends on the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Service service which failed to start because of the following error:
The operation completed successfully."

sfc and SFCFix didn't help, either. I have no idea what else to try except to run a Windows refresh and spend the next weeks reinstalling everything :-(

No, nothing missing. When I start SSTP manually, it tells me that it started successfully and immediately stopped (which is AFAIK the expected behavior for this service if nobody actually needs it). I assume all of this is related to the broken WAN Miniport
devices (SSTP, IKEv2, L2TP, PPTP) but I have found not way of uninstalling and recreating them.

I was able to solve the problem now. I tried the WAN Miniport Repair tool but it couldn't remove the broken devices. A Windows Refresh was not possible for some reason. Finally I ran an Update installation of Windows 8.1 and surprisingly it actually installed
(I would have expected it to abort since I was already on 8.1 update 1). Now RasMan is working fine again and pretty much everything (applications, drivers, settings) is still there.